Today I got the email for renewal in late January from the AA,
30 days notice basically
A follow-up letter may arrive early next year though..
What's made you not grumpy but not smile either today?
- Thread starter dave
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What's made you not grumpy but not smile either today?
30 days notice basically
A follow-up letter may arrive early next year though..
The Panda Nut
Nutty about Pandas Infected by Panda virus and OPD
Thats good 29 days to forget and 1 day to panicToday I got the email for renewal in late January from the AA,
30 days notice basically
A follow-up letter may arrive early next year though..
Hmmm... I got a reminder from NFU 30 days (House and 1 Panda) ahead, but all of the others were much closer.
Of course it could be that the insurance companies are sending them out early enough, but Royal Mail sit on them for a while... making it inefficiency rather than conspiracy?
Of course it could be that the insurance companies are sending them out early enough, but Royal Mail sit on them for a while... making it inefficiency rather than conspiracy?
The Panda Nut
Nutty about Pandas Infected by Panda virus and OPD
The Panda Nut
Nutty about Pandas Infected by Panda virus and OPD
Daughter arrived with the Seat Leon. It needs new rear pads, so these were waiting. As its been dry today I decided to do them. First side had a new caliper a year ago. Pads down to 2mm evenly worn. Drivers side pads down to the metal. The backing plate was like a hedgehog so there was 0.5mm of pad left in between the spikes. SIde one all done and dusted on 5 minutes. I thought this is easy! The drivers side piston would however not wind back. With the pads 99.5% worn and the dicss looking thin too I think the adjuster had overrun the thread inside the caliper. It was not going to shift. 14:55 I decided it was going to have to have a calpier replaced. One call to ECP and they reserved a caliper for me at both branches. I arrived in poor Ruby who was probably on the verge of catching fire and there it was on the counter waiting for me 23 minutes in hand. Its a Lucas CAV unit in a Pagid box. Got home just after 4 to the last little bit of light. I had the flexis done a few years back and the bolt came straight out and was shiny and bright. Rustled up my Gunsons Easi bleed and connected it to the tyre. Undid the bleed valve and nice clean fluid was running out. Put the caliper on and fitted the pads, gave a secondary bleeding with the pedal given a few good shoves and a load of air came out and a littel cloudy fluid. Wheel on, and a test drive shows no issues so about 70 minutes in total. What are the odds of getting a caliper the ay 3.30 the day before Christmas and then the job going smoothly. I have the car for a day or two so I can recheck it. Its so much easier working outside so a relief its done as rain is predited for the next few days. As the caliper is to go back as an exchange I dont expect to find out what was stopping it retracting which is a shame. Pads and a caliper for £90 seems a result. Next jobs are service the engine and then drop links on Daffo and a service. Maybe I will have time for Christmas dinner, but its not a certainty.
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The Panda Nut
Nutty about Pandas Infected by Panda virus and OPD
Near enough now to wish the best for everyone on the forum this Christmas and all your families peace, prosperity, and a happy and healthy new year. 2023 not the best year but I am still here thanks entirely to the staff of the NHS to whom I owe a great vote of thanks. Thanks forumers too the forum has also helped me in dark times. Hope to meet loads of you at events next year.
There all puntos
Member
Even blue light drivers have to measure ' How fast can I travel without killing someone other than myself' most paramedics do the 'Craft' when learning.
But there's always something in their path, that why even the fire brigade drive with caution first and save somebody else second.
But there's always something in their path, that why even the fire brigade drive with caution first and save somebody else second.
My desktop computer has made growliing noises occasionally, usually on startup, or when waking up from a sleep. (Much like many of us I suppose)
Yesterday, it decided it needed attention, growling louder and longer, and more consistently. It does go quiet after a few minutes, so this is a fan that reduces speed, and goes quiet.
So today, off with a side cover. Dust inside that can be picked up with a spoon. And a label declaring build date 2015. A little hoovering, and power it up, to see which fan is dying.
Processor cooler, all good, case fan, good. Power supply unit, noisy.
New power supply ordered, £50, from the people who built this unit all those years ago.
Yesterday, it decided it needed attention, growling louder and longer, and more consistently. It does go quiet after a few minutes, so this is a fan that reduces speed, and goes quiet.
So today, off with a side cover. Dust inside that can be picked up with a spoon. And a label declaring build date 2015. A little hoovering, and power it up, to see which fan is dying.
Processor cooler, all good, case fan, good. Power supply unit, noisy.
New power supply ordered, £50, from the people who built this unit all those years ago.
Good on ya.
I had a couple of laptop repairs to do this year. My wife's Asus wouldn't power up even when plugged in. I opened it up and found a bad solder connection at the charging port. A couple seconds with a solder iron and it's running better than it has all year. My old Dell, that I ended up using for work because the HP units they supplied were barely usable for desk jockeys, let alone field staff, ended up with a new 1TB SSD and an extra 4GB of RAM when it was acting and being a Richard at the worst times. This was after a Geek Squad chain told us they could not be fixed and needed to be replaced.(Of course) Out of pocket for Mrs.Cheest's laptop was $0.00 and about $80.00 for mine.
I started repairing and building my own computers after a computer shop tried to rip me off on a repair on a Commodore 64, so a few days ago, 8086,286,386,486, etc before the first Pentiums.
The Panda Nut
Nutty about Pandas Infected by Panda virus and OPD
Wifes computer had a new 500GB SSD disc installed by a local man. £95 which I thought seemed reasonable and hes going to replace my battery on this lap top for £70 which also seems OK? I hate laptops they dont come apart! Or not without a hammer.
Many years ago, before Panasonic Toughbooks arrived, I used to repair Compaq laptops for a telecoms company that gave them to field service engineers.
Got to the point where I could strip one down, replace the screen and reassemble in the back of my Peugeot 405 estate in less time than it took them to go into the office to book out a replacement.
Used to keep a box of spare screens in the car, plus a couple of spare laptops.
Didn't get defeated by many, although there was one which got run over by the van it was supposed to be in.... Saved a few key caps and the battery and binned the rest.
I guess it was familiarity, but I found them easy to work on.
Fast forward 20 years - Took me nearly a whole day to replace the screen on an Acer laptop for my sister a couple of years ago, and swore I would never touch another laptop.
Of course, I just had to replace the battery on my old Dell as I'm too tight to pay someone else to do it.
Got to the point where I could strip one down, replace the screen and reassemble in the back of my Peugeot 405 estate in less time than it took them to go into the office to book out a replacement.
Used to keep a box of spare screens in the car, plus a couple of spare laptops.
Didn't get defeated by many, although there was one which got run over by the van it was supposed to be in.... Saved a few key caps and the battery and binned the rest.
I guess it was familiarity, but I found them easy to work on.
Fast forward 20 years - Took me nearly a whole day to replace the screen on an Acer laptop for my sister a couple of years ago, and swore I would never touch another laptop.
Of course, I just had to replace the battery on my old Dell as I'm too tight to pay someone else to do it.
You forgot 8088.I started repairing and building my own computers after a computer shop tried to rip me off on a repair on a Commodore 64, so a few days ago, 8086,286,386,486, etc before the first Pentiums.
The 8086 came first and the 8088 was essentialy a downgraded version of the same chip.You forgot 8088.
Also despite being significantly younger than this technology, they carried on making these chips well into the late 90s which means when I started out my career in electronics in the late 90s, while the processors of choice at that time were 486 and the early Pentiums and Pentium IIs, I still had hands on experience and worked on 8086 systems.
In my defence I never came across a 8088You forgot 8088.
.How about the "massive" storage capacity MFM and RLL hard drives of around 10MB, some s/h ones used to sound like a jet turbine spinning up.
The first 8086 I had came from an auction of a bankrupt holiday camp who had ran their whole enterprise from a little Brother dot matrix tractor feed printer and the Schneider Euro PC which looked basically like a keyboard with a 740k floppy disk drive in one end that you had to swap Dos disks around to boot up and run. It also came with a tiny IBM screen with green flickering pixels, when combined with old fluorescent strip lights a perfect combination for staff head aches. One of the many improvements I did with my later computers was a decent screen and graphics card to run high resolution and refresh rates, not a problem with modern flat screens.
So there has been some slight progress in Personal Computers.
Just looked up the Schneider Euro PC, apparently it was an 8088 so maybe I did have most of the set.
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@irc Maybe you can help me, I recently picked up an old Panasonic Tough Book CF-D1N series running Win 10 with the intention of trying MES on it and other diagnostics, but the Touch screen doesn't work, so I have to use a USB mouse and keyboard, only paid £40 so not the end of the World.
My last Windows systems were Win 7 as I prefer Linux, less intrusive, so I haven't looked to deeply into this one.
My last Windows systems were Win 7 as I prefer Linux, less intrusive, so I haven't looked to deeply into this one.
I was fortunate or unfortunate to work for IBM's UK R&D at Hursley Park from 1981 onwards. So got to design and work on stuff like the first ever 1GB 5.25" hard drive, colour monitors, talking terminal (Parrot) and other state of the art computer kit. Prior to that military kit varying from Chieftan Tank Gun Control, under water submersible, portable acoustic tracking systems used for trials. After that a small private company (13 staff include MD and cleaner) designing high power, high voltage solidate state systems.
So where @irc says "swore I would never touch another laptop." I actaully feel his pain. These days / my days of desigining and working on electronic systems are thankfully long gone. Like many here we were used to the "pin in hole" and typical DIL (dual in line) ICs, discrete tranistors and components with wire legs, robust connectors with pins & sockets. The only flex cables I ever worked with were in the hard drives.
Back then the early surface mount components had pads around the edges. Today some have pads underneath the chips never to be seen once the chips is soldered onto the board.
It has got to the stage where kit is assembled and if it works then ship it. If it doesn't then fixing it is an expensive and time consuming business even for the manufacturer.
With todays electonics systems and computers being put into cars where space is at a real premium then to one extent I'm surprise anything works after a year or two on the bumpy roads. But when it does fail then if you are lucky enough then the manufacturer will hopefully still be able to supply a replacement. If not repairs are expensive *if* you can find soemone to do it.
With today's laptops, TVs, monitors my pet hate is the insanely small "touch contact" ribbon cables. Often many. The worst are the display panel cables. It is not until you have spent hours putting the equipment back together and powered on to find you have missing line or rows of pixels or just a completely screwed up display. These contact cables are precision aligned by machine. No real alignment guides that humans can work with. Grrrrrrr!
So where @irc says "swore I would never touch another laptop." I actaully feel his pain. These days / my days of desigining and working on electronic systems are thankfully long gone. Like many here we were used to the "pin in hole" and typical DIL (dual in line) ICs, discrete tranistors and components with wire legs, robust connectors with pins & sockets. The only flex cables I ever worked with were in the hard drives.
Back then the early surface mount components had pads around the edges. Today some have pads underneath the chips never to be seen once the chips is soldered onto the board.
It has got to the stage where kit is assembled and if it works then ship it. If it doesn't then fixing it is an expensive and time consuming business even for the manufacturer.
With todays electonics systems and computers being put into cars where space is at a real premium then to one extent I'm surprise anything works after a year or two on the bumpy roads. But when it does fail then if you are lucky enough then the manufacturer will hopefully still be able to supply a replacement. If not repairs are expensive *if* you can find soemone to do it.
With today's laptops, TVs, monitors my pet hate is the insanely small "touch contact" ribbon cables. Often many. The worst are the display panel cables. It is not until you have spent hours putting the equipment back together and powered on to find you have missing line or rows of pixels or just a completely screwed up display. These contact cables are precision aligned by machine. No real alignment guides that humans can work with. Grrrrrrr!
Early IT stuff was meant to be repaired, but these days with surface mounted chips and multi layer PCBs it is replacement and that is only as long as manufacturer decides.
Coming from a motor engineering background, logic and understanding the basics helped. I make no claims re programming etc. though one of my sisters did that for large banking companies.
Re the wire leg transistors, strangely enough the guy who helped me all those years ago on the Commodore 64 (the shop that wanted to charge me 3 x as much was farming the work out to a small business just starting up and I happened to see his advert), he fixed the issue and whilst talking, the computer shop came up) later he had progressed rightly to a successful company with many employees. I took a circuit board from a Mig welder to see if he could repair it, one of his staff did the job, but it didn't work, on looking at the repair I thought the transistor wires had been fitted wrong, collector, emitter, base and showed my friend, first he said no way would that have happened and then whilst we were talking his eyes were following the pins and he suddenly agreed. He was grateful as he had doubts about this employee which confirmed it.
Another friend who initially just repaired on a small scale was fitting a part inside a computer case and kept dropping the screw, I said let me do it, to which he replied "your great big clumpy mechanics hands will never do it" of course I did it straight away as a lot of car stuff can be fiddly, so a certain amount of dexterity is handy.
I acquired a flat screen TV from a old customer where no picture, but you could hear the sound, a little research told me that you could see the picture if you shone a light at the screen, which meant the LED strips of lights behind it were at fault, I bought the parts and the screen worked perfectly, sadly due to the design as you reassemble the last surrounding that holds it all into place even though very careful resulted in the screen cracking, so that was the end of a promising career
. Strangely I did have another customer who had repaired the older type TVs and worked on communication equipment during WW2, his advise was to carry out repairs involving large high voltage capacitors etc. to only use one hand, the reason being any electrical shock would pass down one side of your body to earth, where as if both hands were used it could go through your heart with fatal consequences.The touch contact ribbons you mention reminds me of daughters Punto Evo passenger seat sensor, previous owners attempt at repair destroyed the BCM due to bypassing the resister inadvertently, a new seat sensor from Fiat was around £137 I think but Ebay Chinese basic sensor was £6, I was able to fit the original resistor from the damaged seat sensor to the new Chinese one, I still had to get the BCM but was lucky to get a brand new Fiat one with correct numbers unused for £149 then using friends Snap On Zeus Diagnostics did a "proxi alignment" and she is still using the car today over a year later.
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I also have a CF-D1 for running MES - it definitely had a hard life before I got it, but is still going.@irc Maybe you can help me, I recently picked up an old Panasonic Tough Book CF-D1N series running Win 10 with the intention of trying MES on it and other diagnostics, but the Touch screen doesn't work, so I have to use a USB mouse and keyboard, only paid £40 so not the end of the World.
My last Windows systems were Win 7 as I prefer Linux, less intrusive, so I haven't looked to deeply into this one.
Unfortunately my knowledge of Toughbooks had to be limited to software and drivers as we weren't allowed to open them up at all. Although in the year or so it took to switch everyone over to them there were only couple of failures, neither of which resulted in loss of data. Pretty impressive considering the treatment they got.
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Why not just replace the fan in the PSU?
